Robert Tanitch takes a look at this week's top DVD releases

By Robert Tanitch - 02/09/2010

  GHOST (Optimum). Roman Polanski directs a conspiracy thriller for adult audiences. A ghostwriter (Ewan McGregor) is engaged to work on the memoirs of a former British Prime Minister (Pierce Brosnan) who is accused of war crimes and being a puppet of the US and doing the CIA’s bidding. Author Robert Harris insists his story has nothing to do with Tony Blair. Well, that’s all right then; but who is going to believe him?

 

ANDROCLES AND THE LION (Odeon) Ridiculously cheerful Christians sing hymns on their way to the Coliseum where they are the star attraction. When Bernard Shaw’s play (not one of his best) was first produced in 1913 the critics dismissed it as offensive, insulting, nasty, infantile, crude, repulsive and blasphemous. Watching this tacky 1952 film version you wonder what all the fuss was about. Robert Newton rolls his eyes and gives a parody of Robert Newton rolling his eyes.

 

LEBANON (Metrodrome ) The camera, when it is not looking at the faces of the Israeli tank crew in claustrophobic close-up, sees only what they see of the outside world through the tank’s cranking viewfinder. Samuel Maoz, drawing on his own experiences when he was fighting in 1982, does not spare the viewer the terrors and horrors of war. It is not an easy film to watch.

 

DOUBLE DYNAMITE (Odeon). A bank-teller is wrongly accused of embezzlement. Released in 1951, and acted by Frank Sinatra, Groucho Marks and Jane Russell, it has the feel of one of those innocuous 1930s screwball comedy.

 

SINBAD THE SAILOR (Odeon). Silly cardboard nonsense in overbright technicolour with bad pantomime performances to match from a cast led by Douglas Fairbanks Jr giving an imitation of his swashbuckling dad.

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